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For a home in Regents Park in Palm Beach, interior designer Leta Austin Foster was asked by her clients to honor the 1950s Palm Beach Regency-style architecture, which she did by nodding at the work of legendary decorator Billy Baldwin. Photo by Erik Kvalsvik, courtesy Leta Austin Foster

Posted: 8:00 a.m. Friday, November 24, 2017

Interior designer and Palm Beacher Leta Austin Foster regaled her audience with anecdotes during a recent talk at the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach.

At one point, she described a trip to a furniture warehouse, where she was shopping for 1950s-era furnishings for a Palm Beach design project that was the focus of her talk.

“Never had I seen such a hodgepodge of horrible and wonderful,” she said, her distinctive Southern accent highlighting each of the adjectives as she landed the quip with perfect timing.

On Friday, Foster delivered the inaugural lecture in the foundation’s Polly Jessup Series, a new annual program sponsored by the family of the late interior designer Polly Jessup, including part-time Palm Beachers Jeanne and David Daniel. Jessup, who died in 1988 at age 99, had a home and studio in Phipps Plaza, as well as in New York City.

During Jessup’s 40-year career, she created understated but charming rooms for the carriage trade, with a portfolio of clients that included a Who’s Who of Palm Beach, New York City and elsewhere — the Fords, the DuPonts and the Kennedys, among them.

The lecture series will feature interior designers whose work can be seen in Palm Beach historic homes, said foundation Executive Director Amanda Skier.

“The Grande Dame of Palm Beach Decorators: Polly Jessup” will be on view at the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach through Dec. 22. Photo by CAPEHART

“The Grande Dame of Palm Beach Decorators: Polly Jessup” will be on view at the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach through ... read more

Foster’s lecture coincided with the opening reception for an exhibit focusing on Jessup’s career and displayed in the library of the foundation building at 311 Peruvian Ave. On view through Dec. 22, “The Grande Dame of Palm Beach Decorators: Polly Jessup” includes photographs of the decorator’s room designs, some of her working drawings and even the storefront sign that hung outside her office and warehouse on Georgia Avenue in West Palm Beach. There’s also an unusual collection of stereopticon slides that depict her room settings in 3D, thanks to special viewing devices. The exhibit — open 10-4 p.m. Monday-Friday — includes items on loan from The Society of the Four Arts.

In the family room of a home in Regents Park, Palm Beach interior designer Leta Austin Foster paid homage to decorator Billy Baldwin and his frequent use of bookshelves. Photo by Erik Kvalsvik courtesy Leta Austin Foster

In the family room of a home in Regents Park, Palm Beach interior designer Leta Austin Foster paid homage to decorator ... read more

Foster’s clients, she said, wanted to honor the style and era of the house in their renovation. The name of the house’s original interior designer, if there was one, has been lost to time. So Foster’s design instead paid homage to one of her decorating heroes, the legendary Billy Baldwin, who once famously said: “Rich Palm Beach clients all want the same kind of different thing.”

Baldwin, who lived to be 80 and died in 1983, decorated a number of Palm Beach houses, often with his signature mix of elegant and informal furnishings, much of it custom designed. He favored non-cluttered rooms with a modern sensibility, often mixing fine antiques with exotic accents, bamboo furniture and animal prints.

That mix of the casual and the elegant is one of Leta Austin Foster & Associates’ signatures as well — and, coincidentally, it also marked much of Jessup’s work, when she was designing homes for resort living in Palm Beach. Foster mentioned Jessup’s love of detailed lampshades, chinoiserie accents and floral chintz, all of which Foster frequently uses in her own designs.

“Polly Jessup was one of my mentors. I never met her, but I admired her work from afar,” Foster said, adding that Jessup designed the interiors of the El Brillo Way home owned by the late parents of her husband, Ridgely Foster.

During her lecture, Foster repeatedly referenced the work of Jessup and Baldwin. At one point, she showed a picture of a custom-made rattan settee she designed for the house’s entry hall with a style reminiscent of Chippendale furniture.

“It’s a beautiful piece of rattan in a very classic shape with a silk cushion — it’s very Billy Baldwin,” she said.

Another photo depicted a mostly white room with floral-covered upholstered pieces, one of Baldwin’s famous slipper chairs and an emerald-green sofa in one corner. In the dining room, she used set of dining chairs designed — and signed — by Baldwin. Foster then had the seats upholstered in a Baldwin-designed animal-print fabric.

“He might have wanted to a have a leopard rug — but I think that would have been a little too much,” she said about one room.

Elsewhere in the house are a series of framed hand-painted fashion illustrations from the 1920s that her client brought from her previous Palm Beach house, which Foster also decorated. In a bit of unexpected design serendipity, Foster said, the illustrations paid homage to a similar collection Baldwin once used in a project.

“Billy Baldwin loved fashion pictures. We don’t know who did ours — but his were done by Picasso,” she wryly noted.

With a second location in New York City, Foster works out of a studio above her home-furnishings and gift boutique in the Via Mizner off Worth Avenue. And like Baldwin, Foster likes to re-use clients’ existing furnishings, often freshening them with new finishes or upholstery.

Throughout the house, she pointed out many items that were re-stained, painted or manufactured by local businesses, including hanging lanterns, wall sconces, murals and furnishings. And at the end of her talk, she introduced several local artisans who had contributed to the project. She also urged those in the audience who are working on a renovation or building a new house to use artisans based in Palm Beach and vicinity.

“One of the beauties of living in Palm Beach is the ocean of talented people here,” she said. “Please sponsor them. Don’t just order something out of (catalog). And if anyone wants to make over a house, call me and I’ll give you my sources. It’s so important that (their businesses) stay alive.”

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